Markets remain volatile; IT shares gain

The main gainers on the Sensex include Wipro, Dr Reddy's Lab, Sesa Goa, Maruti Suzuki, Coal India, TCS, Tata Motors and M&M

Benchmark indices continue to remain volatile in a narrow range with Sensex and Nifty oscillating between negative and positive zone.

Markets have remained caution ahead the Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy later this week.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Open Market Commitee (FOMC) meet on September 17-18 will be key in terms of any tapering of $85 billion monthly bond purchases that led to significant inflows in the emerging markets especially India so far.

At 12:45 PM, the 30-share Sensex gained 39 points to trade at 19,779 and the 50-share Nifty rose 10 points at 5,850 levels.

Asian shares eased and the dollar firmed on Tuesday as investors, who welcomed Lawrence Summers ending his bid to lead the U.S. Federal Reserve, consolidated positions before a meeting at which the central bank is likely to start withdrawing stimulus.

While a trim of the Fed's massive bond purchases causes some apprehension, markets anticipate a much longer road to rate hikes after former Treasury Secretary Summers dropped out of the race to become its next chief.

The weakness in the rupee continues in afternoon trades due to persistent dollar demand by importers.

At 12:05 pm the rupee was trading at Rs 63.39 compared with previous close of Rs 62.85 per dollar.

Meanwhile, gold hovered just above a five-week low on Tuesday as traders waited for guidance on when the U.S. Federal Reserve will begin tapering its massive economic stimulus.

Bullion has lost more than 20% of its value this year as a recovering U.S. economy has dented its safe-haven appeal and raised fears the U.S. central bank would scale back its commodities-friendly bond purchases.

On the sectoral front, BSE IT index has spurted by nearly 2% followed by counters like TECk, Metal and Auto, all gaining by 1% each. However, BSE Power index has declined by nearly 2% followed by counters like Consumer Durables, PSU, Capital Goods, Banks and Oil & Gas, all falling down by 1% each.

The main gainers on the Sensex at this hour include Wipro, Dr Reddy’s Lab, Sesa Goa, Maruti Suzuki, Coal India, TCS, Tata Motors and M&M, all gaining between 1-4%.

On the losing side, Sun Pharma, NTPC, ONGC, Tata Power and HDFC have declined between 1-3%.

Shares of gold finance companies such as Muthoot Finance and Manappuram Finance are trading lower by up to 10% on BSE after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) tightened regulations governing non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) lending against gold jewellery.

The market breath in BSE remains weak with 1,124 shares declining and 61 shares advancing.